Freescale has designed core-agnostic packet-handling hardware for its QorIQ network processors,allowing it to introduce ARM-based network chips alongside its traditional PowerPC-types.
Layerscape,as the packet architecture will be known,also takes on many of the activities previously handled by the PowerPC general-purpose processor(GPP).
"In the past,the GPP layer had to be involved in all packet operations all of the time,"Freescale networking general manager Frederic Haine told Electronics Weekly."Layerscape follows the synchronous-run-to-completion model,so the GPP layer is very lightly involved."
Instead of the single'DPAA 1.1'packet processing layer used before,Layerscape has two:accelerated packet processing(APP)and express packet I/O(EPI)-see diagram.
"It is packets/second/watt that counts in the domain of the packet processing layer,"said Haine."We estimate that this APP layer plus this EPI layer have twice the performance and consume half the power of DPAA 1.1."-both compared on 28nm processes.
Both the APP and EPI layers are separately scalable depending on application,and Freescale will introduce two Layerscape-based families:
LS-1-two ARM Cortex-A7 cores,running at up to 1.2GHz.
LS-2-two more powerful A15 cores,running at up to 1.5GHz,with<5W total power.
Chips scaled for all parts of telecoms networks will be available,said Haine,including versions with Layerscape plus PowerPC-From many-core data path devices delivering up to 100Gbit/s,down to types consuming 3W,said the firm.
The first chips available will be the ARM-based Layerscape QorIQs,
in mid 2013.
According to Haine,network operators are trying to move to software-defined'virtualised'networks,where network optimisation and tuning is done by over-network firmware updates.
"Before,they had to take a truck and change the box,"he said.
Towards this,the industry is trying to standardise on an interface to the control side of the network that is standard across all equipment makers-OpenFlow is one attempt,and Cisco has opened some of its APIs to the world,said Haine.
"To address the need for more intelligent,dynamic networks,Freescale has taken our QorIQ platform a significant step further with the new software-aware Layerscape architecture,"said Tom Deitrich,v-p of Freescale's networking group."We've made software awareness an integral part of our architecture."
